The Chicago punk scene wasn’t very kind to Donté Oxun after the 29-year-old moved here from Washington, D.C., in 2007. “These punk dudes gave me the name ‘the faggot’ or ‘culero,’ meaning ass fucker or ass man,” Oxun says. “There was a lot of machismo, antiblack sentiment, sexist and homophobic sentiment, and lots of side comments and treatment like that.”
Oxun, who moved from Chicago to New Orleans last year, went to Georgetown University in D.C., and recalls feeling alienated by the city’s overwhelmingly white, straight, male punk scene—even when people at shows did try to start conversations, the only black band they could bring up was Bad Brains, a hardcore act tainted by accusations of homophobia.
Black and Brown’s members all love punk music, but they’re more devoted to its DIY spirit, its leftist politics, and its celebration of living proudly outside societal limitations. The collective raises awareness and funds with shows—not just its festival but also four to six smaller concerts throughout the year—and its Web presence serves as a hub for bands and bookers in Chicago and around the country who want to find hospitable venues or get involved booking QTIPOC artists.
Safe spaces are a primary concern of the Black and Brown collective. “Sometimes we need to create our own spaces in order to make progress, because of so many other social-conditioning issues that come up in the punk scene,” Estrella Negra says. “I feel like people of color have never had this choice—to choose where they can feel comfortable, to define that. So I feel like it’s important for us to be able to choose what spaces we can feel comfortable in and not catch any flak for it.”
“People who are so used to taking up space, they don’t realize how their words can be really damaging in terms of people trying to speak to their own experience,” she explains. Many punk peers, she says, accuse her and the collective of being “too PC”—and the organizers of Chicago’s Fed Up Fest, which celebrates queer and transgender identity in the punk scene, have experienced a similar backlash. But Black and Brown’s insistence on defining safe spaces of its own choosing isn’t being politically correct, Estrella Negra says, but rather exercising a fundamental right. “A lot people don’t know they’re being disrespectful because they’ve never hung out with people like us until the point that they come to the festival,” she adds. “More than anything else, what we try to do is explain why they are being messed up.”
The collective’s aversion to corporate involvement (Oxun claims to have turned down sponsorship offers already) hasn’t prevented it from growing at a grassroots level—take for instance the offshoots arising in New Orleans and Buffalo. Oxun will visit Chicago for the summer festival, then return home to help lead the New Orleans chapter—which recently built some early momentum with an event celebrating the connections between Chicago house music and New Orleans bounce.
